This blog runs parallel to a new poetry blog 'Poetry Pinfold' (poetrypinfold.blogspot.com), and a new blog with poems in Dutch (bartnooteboomgedichten.blogspot.com)

Saturday, April 14, 2018

366. How to extend the boundaries of trust

In item 205 of this blog I discussed the phenomenon of
‘parochial altruism’ and in 208 its implication for the integration of
refugees. To recall: there is altruism within the group at the cost of
suspicion and distrust regarding outsiders. That may explain the problems concerning
refugees. For their integration, then, the boundaries of the group need to be
extended to include them in trust.

What determines the boundaries? Here I adopt an idea
from Carsten de Dreu that the boundaries of a group are determined by
proximity, similarity (in appearance, conduct, habit, religion, political
views. ideology, …), and a sense of a shared fate.

Immigration yields proximity in space. Similarity is
slow to develop, in cultural assimilation. And then there is a vicious circle
of immigrants being discriminated against, then sticking together and
maintaining their dissimilarity. How, then, to speed up the growth of
similarity, and to achieve a sense of a shared fate?

The practice of crowding immigrants together in large
centres then is counterproductive, in settling a fate that is shared only
between them, secluded from the host society.

It is better to get them into jobs or shared projects
with indigenous people, where they become mutually dependent and need to share
ideas, practices, goals, understanding.

Rather than waiting until they are sufficiently
integrated and trained before entering jobs, it should be turned around: jobs
provide the platform and the incentive to integrate.

In practical action, inprojects, ideologies fade, do not help, and
people find out, often to their surprise, that they are much more similar, with
similar needs and imperfections, than they were aware of.

The principle applies more widely, to overcome the
segregation of a population into different, rival social, cultural groups, in
what is sometimes called a new ‘tribalism’. That is enhanced by the ‘filter
bubbles’ that emerge in the use of internet: people are fed and choose
information congruent with views they already have, in social media and
advertising tailored to their previous conduct and choices.

This tendency is especially pernicious with people
seeing their identity in terms of the group they belong to and the stands that
they take concerning current issues, such as climate, gender, economics,
democracy, public debate, freedom, …. Then disagreement is not just a
difference of view but is felt to constitute an attack on one’s identity, which
enhances culture wars and separation of populists and elites.

Part of this correlates with differences in education
levels, employment and prosperity. People of different social groups segregate
in different neighbourhoods with different price levels of housing, amenities
and the furnishings of public space with coffee shops, bistro’s, delicatessen,
etc. Here the group determinants of proximity and similarity diverge further
rather than converge.

To counter this, citizens should be involved more in
joint work, recreational activities, and political involvement in local
development and execution of public policies.

This connects with my earlier plea , in item 283, to
move away from a politics of positioning, voting for a political party with a
pre-arranged set of policy proposals, every four or five years, to a politics
of process where people are involved in the making and execution of policy.

There is an additional argument for this, mentioned
also in the foregoing item in this blog. Democracy is by its nature imperfect
and messy in its process, never satisfying everybody. Being excluded from the
process, citizens seem to increasingly see this at best as incompetence and at
its worst as a conspiracy against the people by an elite. By involving citizens
in the process they become complicit in the mess of democracy, more
understanding of it, and learn to live with it, rather than seeking recourse in
the illusory efficiency and coherence of a totalitarian regime.

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Poems posted on Poetrypinfold.blogspot.comComing down (a memory of Genevaa) NightYin and YangPoetry pinfoldSiëstaDown and out in the mindThe stream bears light (the Nasrid palace at the Alhambra)From one to many Sunday in GoudaOn the canalStanzas of stone (San Gimignano, torre grosso)The words have a ballNo rocket scienceMontreuxNew roomGenerationsSister (Paris)MotherMother 2Blessed solitudeCivil servantAdolescent lamentThe streamTender rip-offNight 2BirdsAtlas unmovedSeminar on KrakmaroDiplomacyDepositionWinter train in ThuringenSarajevoFar aheadHat trick on the canalFlowers of deathOn a camping one night

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